Click this: From analog dreams to digital realities

Cinema Journal

Volumn 43, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 93-98

  Everett, Anna ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949857324     PISSN: 00097101     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/cj.2004.0015     Document Type: Review

References (14)

1. See Everett, "Digitextuality and Click Theory: Theses on Convergence Media in the Digital Age," in Everett and Caldwell, New Media, 3-28
2. For details on these and other developments in cell phone technology and the real and imagined, see the following online articles: "Nokia, RealNetworks Team for Music, Video over Cell Phones," April 26, 2000, www.news.com.com/2104-1033_3-242527.html; Agam Shah, "TV Comes to Cell Phones: New Service Streams Live Video to Sprint PCS Vision Customers," November 14, 2003, www.pcworld.com/resource/printable/article/0,aid,113413,00. asp; Brum McDonough, "Atari Video Games Updated for Cell Phones," May 23, 2002, at www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/printer/17896/; "Reflections on Tokyo and Japan," April 11, 2003, www.mayhem-chaos.net/blog/archives/ 000029.html; and "The Japanese Cell Phone Market," September 2002, www.geckobeach.com/cellular/articles/japan.html
3. Shah, "TV Comes to Cell Phones."
4. Jean-François Lyotard, The Inhuman (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1991), 13
5. Allucquere Rosanne Stone, "Will the Body Please Stand Up?: Boundary Stories about Virtual Cultures," in Michael Benedikt, ed., Cyberspace: First Steps (Cambridge: MIT Press), 1991, 104
6. I borrow this term from Michele Wallace, Invisibility Blues: From Pop to Theory (New York: Verso Press, 1990)
7. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: Vintage Books, 1952)
8. I do admit, however, to being intrigued by the few and far between cinematic and televisual constructions of Afro-geeks, such as William Marshall's Dr. Daystrom, the African American mad scientist creator of the M-5 super computer brain in the original Star Trek TV show
9. Joe Morton's slightly less mad scientist inventor in Terminator 2 (James Cameron, 1992)
10. Sidney Poitier's computer genius in the film Sneakers (Phil Alden Robinson, 1992)
11. Laurence Mason's Paul Cook, the African American Afrogeek with a photographic memory (hence his Lord Nikon moniker) in Hackers (Iain Softley, 1995)
12. and Laurence Fishburne's über Afro-geek Morpheus in The Matrix trilogy (Andy and Larry Wachowski, 1999-2003)
13. Consider how Martin Bernal's Black Athena (1987), centering on modern European civilization's indebtedness to African civilizations, and Carter G. Woodson's formulation of Negro History Week (now Black History Month), which persistently remind us of black peoples' innovations in science, medicine, and culture, undermine the relegation of black peoples' technological contributions to "ancient" and "prehistory" categories. And more contemporaneously, in popular music, Elvis Presley and Pat Boone appropriated black rock'n'roll, Vanilla Ice and Eminem appropriate black rap and hip-hop music, Bo Derek popularized black women's cornrow hairstyles in the popular film 10 (Blake Edwards, 1979), and William Shatner appropriates Ebonics for Priceline.com
14. After I completed researching this essay, I read Clive Thompson's article "Remote Possibilities: The More Our Mobile Phones Can Do for Us, the More They Change Us," in the New York Times Magazine, November 16, 2003. Thompson quotes Mizuko Ito, a researcher at the University of Southern California, whose observations are compatible with my conclusions. Thompson's article is very articulate, with information collected from a wide range of telecommunications experts, and I recommend it